MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Thousands of people are in the dark after three ice storms slammed the Mid-South. 

Pierre Landaiche is staying positive after his power was knocked out early Thursday morning. He said the outage came after this massive tree fell in his neighborhood near North Highland and Waynoka Avenue.

“I’ve got a generator going. So, we’re good,” Landaiche said. “We’ve been through it before. We’ll deal with it. You know they’re doing the best they can.”

City and MLGW crews rushed to clear the roadway and restore power.

MLGW VP of Community and External Affairs, Gale Jones Carson, said Monday night roughly 5,000 customers were without power due to freezing rain weighing down trees and powerlines.

However, she said after three rounds of freezing rain, that number has more than tripled.

“You can see that it is absolutely covered by an extremely thick blanket of ice. This ice is weighing trees like this down is causing major problems,” Carson said. “We’ve just had a good number of limbs falling into our lines.”

She said areas seeing the most outages are around Bartlett, inside the I-240 loop, and Hickory Hill.

“If trees don’t continue to fall into our lines causing a great number of power outages, then we are hopeful that services will be restored by tomorrow. However, if those numbers increase significantly, then we will not be able to even just guestimate that power will be restored by Friday,” Carson said.

Unlike the last winter storm in December, Carson said customers do not have to worry about pipes bursting.

“The temperature did not get low enough to have burst pipes all over the city which we had in the past,” she said.

Carson said they have crews working 24/7 in 16-hour shifts to quickly and safely restore power. MLGW asks that you report any downed powerlines to their 24-hour emergency hotline at 901-528-4465. Outages can be reported online or by calling 901-544-6500.